Tuesday, February 21, 2012

1017. Randy thinks that imagining something he thinks is cool is an extreme sport! He also wants us to think that he imagines something he thinks is cool while he's waiting for something. This is pretty sad.

1018. lolrandumb is not funny, Randy.

1019. Whenever Randy gets political he always does it in a really dumb way, and he gives everyone with left-leaning politics a bad name. This one has the traditional old Randy smugness--"it's totally dumb to buy advertising that everyone who views a site will see when you can just hire people to shill for you on a section of the website that most people don't read unless they want to argue with people"--where he thinks he's smarter than, you know, people who actually know what they're talking about, by drawing a completely unrealistic comparison between two things that are completely unrelated.

See, the point of political advertising on websites (or most advertising, really) is not to win people over to your side. It's about name and brand recognition. Whereas the point of hiring someone to shill for you on the internet is to sway opinions about something people are already aware of. The comment sections of news articles aren't particularly good for this since discussion doesn't actually happen there. You want to go to active forums and things, build rapport, enter a community, and subvert from within. This was my plan with joining the xkcd sucks community, for instance. In a few weeks I'll write a post about how much I love xkcd and instantly all the haters will revert to drooling fanboys, and Randy and I will high-five while he slips me a ten dollar bill for a job well done.

Totally worth it.

It seems likely that Randy may be instead (additionally?) suggesting that many or most political comments online are in fact astroturf comments as described in the comic. This has always been one of the dumbest features of online communities--the accusations that people who disagree with them are just shills--and I'd say I'm disappointed in Randy for encouraging such behavior but let's be honest. It's impossible for me to be any more disappointed in Randy than I have been for the last, oh, thirty-four years.

Before some knuckle dragging shithead cuddlefish comes along and points out what Dadaism means and therefore 1018 is hilarious Randy is the greatest thing to grace webcomics: The Dadaist articstic movement was defined by an abstract and avant-garde approach to creative mediums, including written word. As in, there is a creative force behind it and not, as noted in today's post, LOL SO RANDDUMB.

Of course, assuming you could interpret WHY ARE MY BONES SO SMALL ECKS DEE as Dadaist, that still begs the question of where the fuck is the punchline, and why is Randy still pandering to faux-nerd ghouls who claim to know what Dadaism is because they listened to some Skinny Puppy once.

10:51/10:47. I love this guy. Being right about this is a major point of honour for him. I'm so tempted to contest his conception of what constitutes creative force and performance, and query what evidence he has from this little fictional vignette that the fictional cop's performance isn't part of a considered aesthetic (his claim that it's because there would be no punchline is pretty unconvincing), but why bother? He's not as interested in discussion as he is in being crowned correct. He probably has an undergraduate introductory course in art history to justify or something.

I'm referring to him indirectly because I think it might rile him a little bit, but I'm also writing this in an attempt to stem further trolling attempts. Because I love you, 10:51/10:47. I want you for myself.

I find that it's a thoughtful analysis of dadaism. As stated, dadaism focuses on an abstract, avant-garde approach to creative mediums. Since a webcomic is a creative medium (xkcd often focusing on commentary about pop culture and other media). So really, this isn't about cops. It's about dadaism and how there's often no single meaning which can be assumed that most participants understand. The meaning taken is often very different between observers.

If we're truly going to hold this up to a lens of dadaist judgment, then here's what i think: dadaism is often used to poke fun at super serious people and goad them into making fools of themselves by taking things too literally. So really, the punchline is your butthurt "i don't get it" which you try to disguise as serious criticism of the strip.

Or, perhaps everybody's reading way way too much into it. Just read and enjoy if you want, or find something you actually do enjoy.

I looked up Dada after 1018 because even though I knew Randall HAD to be misinterpreting it, a faded memory from an Art History class I slept through didn't seem like enough evidence for my sense of smug superiority. Fortunately, thirty seconds of Wikipedia research did the trick.

Yeah. I looked it up too. I knew what it was, but it's one of those things you read or hear about pretty rarely unless you're an art history student (which I'm not), and I didn't want to get all critical of Randy until I confirmed that it was his understanding of it that was wrong, and not mine.

The weird thing is, I think he picked it because it was obscure. Surrealism is much more widely known (it seems that way to me anyway) than Dada, and it's actually much more appropriate because it isn't tied to the anti-war movement, to which his comic was totally unconnected. I think he chose Dada because most of his readership wouldn't know anything about it, and that makes him feel clever. It only backfired because he didn't know much about it himself.

This is Rob posting under an anonymous because it's more interesting to make the more idiotic among the readers of xkcdsucks wonder whether this is real, than to post using my actual account and have all the cuddlefish lurkers spam "we knew it all along."

I meant what I said about really loving xkcd. I am the greatest genius who ever lived, and therefore the greatest troll. Disregard my last paragraph in the blog post... the first clue that that's a red herring is that my blog post is longer than usual - I actually worked on this entry instead of spewing the first sentence that came to mind about four comics on one post.

You are all fools for believing me. xkcd is a paragon of satire and wit, making Randall's brainchild the superior of Achewood and Dinosaur Comics combined. GOOMH, Randall, you towering milky literary colossus, you god among men, you father of my baby.

he's totally not a fake! all the obvious inaccuracies--the proper use of capitals, the listing of Dinosaur Comics and Achewood as my favorite comics when I don't read Achewood and Dinosaur Comics is enjoyable but far from my favorite comic ever, the punctuation (my ellipses are generally '. . .' or '. . . .' if it's at the end of a sentence and my dashes are always '--' with no space on either side), etc--are there to make people more likely to not believe it's actually me, but it definitely is.

Clearly the ancients who laid out the constellations were just as prudish as contemporary Americans and had to avoid acknowledging the embarrassing fact of Orion's weenie. It's well known that the Greeks viewed the naked male form with horror and loathing. Thank god Randy is brave enough to speak the truth; true maturity demands that we deal with the harsh and unpleasant reality of Orion's peepee (although we shouldn't go so far as to use any but the most childish of slang terms to talk about it). The lie of the sword must be defeated.

Maybe I'm weird, but the thing that bugged me the most about yesterday's comic is the text on the second panel. Have I become truly that biased, or is Randall completely incapable of forming sentences that are not horribly ugly?

What... again with the superfluous limbs? I think this is indicative of something. xkcd is not a comic, but an art project of unfathomable size. Randy is creating a comic which is polarizing in its poor writing and poor jokes, in its nerdy pandering, until xkcd has entered all of the public conscious... and then... it CHANGES. It grows, unnaturally, skin splitting and horrible new limbs emerging, faces shifting and melting, the stench of miasma filling the air. xkcd becomes a collection of sketches of increasingly terrifying, mind-boggling eldritch abominations, quickly evolving from Randy's current hack art style to savant-like art which would've been beautiful had it not been so horrifying, and which we pray in vain had not been so super-realistic. In the end, the half of Earth's population on xkcdsucks' side blow their brains out in the tub, and Randy is elected World President by the remaining half, and retires to his island paradise with fifteen Megan clones and a lifetime supply of breast milk to create his Magnum Opus, a 15,000-page graphic novel epic about Etymology Man.

I know this echoes on deaf ears, but this blog post was pretty disappointing. I can't say "[i]t's impossible for me to be any more disappointed in" Rob cause I don't read the blog regularly. The review of 1018 for example says nothing. I can't tell if you liked (and are just afraid to say it because it wasn't actually a masterpiece but you can't point out any specific bad parts either maybe because you didn't quite understand the strip [I recommend using Google next time]) or didn't like the comic.

Come on, in this post Rob wrote the first legitimately amusing thing he's written for at least a year, possibly multiple years. I don't know, I'm not going to go back and read over each individual post to make sure. You're just biased against Rob so you automatically don't like anything he writes.

lolranDUMB!!! Hahaha! Get it guys? Because it's like lolrandom, a word I made up, but I put the word dumb at the end instead of -dom. HAHAHA!!! Do you get it? If you don't get it, ask me, because I can explain it for you.

I thought 1021 was pretty alright too, though I've seen the joke done better as a photo of a "bum for sale" sign next to a homeless guy who fell asleep in front of his hat.

The alt-text was terrible too, but most comics with alt-text do them terribly. Most comics shouldn't do it, and they probably just want to because they think they can do it as well as Dinosaur Comics. They can't.

Interestingly, at the xkcd forum the first few comments about this comic said they didn't like it.

why do you have to pick the comic apart? i read it, i laughed, i moved on. that's what you're supposed to do with jokes. this whole blog is kind of freaking me out it's so negative. i think i'm going to go outside.

At first I thought this blog was some sort of crude attempt at satire. Now I realize it's just some guy trying to draw out angry reactions.

You seem like the kind of guy who tries to justify his meaningless existence by attacking a very nice webcomic. For example, your criticism of number 1019 was completely unwarranted--in no way is Randall implying that he knows more about campaigning than the politicians himself. He is simply pointing out how easily the average american news-reader can be swayed by what appears to be "peer consensus" on the Internet. Your distortion of the idea in 1018 was pretty unwarranted too. I personally think it's an interesting, but not great, idea to pass time. In no way has anyone suggested that going through history is an "extreme sport."

XKCD might not be the best webcomic, or even particularly good. I don't understand, though, why you find it necessary to validate your existence by shitting over every small detail in every little comic. It seems to me more like your fans are caught up in a faux-anti-faux-nerd culture and have been utterly consumed by hatred for a webcomic they haven't actually bothered to think about at all; you're barfing opinions and hate directly into their bodies.

A perfect example of this was this comment: "Am i the only one thinking his advertising number in 1019 is way to low? Would i cost nothing more than $1.5 million to get an ad on EVERY story for more than half a year? Randall, you suck." What the actual fuck? You go from the premise that it would cost more than 1.5 million for a certain number of ads to the conclusion that XKCD sucks. The train of thought I'm seeing here is *Our God Rob says XKCD is bad* --> *A Meaningless, Irrelevant Part of the comic may be incorrect* --> *XKCD is a terrible comic*. Not implying that you're trying to be a faux-anti-faux-nerd, but you seem to have led dozens of people to this point.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this video just about sums up you and your website:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0msQb5SiPSI

Couple more examples of this, in that case:"I don't believe Randall even has a girlfriendFeb 22, 2012 06:21 AMThe imaginary girlfriend Randall gave cancer to as part of his internal battle with his lactophilia HAS CANCER. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, 6:18." This sounds to me like a guy trying to get in on the anti-faux-nerd culture you've created here."Anyone who really understood xkcd would demonstrate more seething hatred." Again, seems like a stubborn guy who can't accept that there might be more than one point of view on something. He's been utterly consumed by the hatred in this unforgiving mob of people.

This probably started as a very reasonable attempt to show why many people's worship of XKCD is unjustified. And I agree with you that this "faux-nerd" culture is getting to be pretty sad. But it seems as though your own readers "are too caught up in the [faux-anti-]faux-nerd culture that xkcd [sucks] is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible [terrible seems too extreme for both xkcd and your blog but ohwell]."

interestingly enough i just wrote about the exact type of stupid that you are demonstrating right now the other day! currently you're on the 'not getting the point' stage. let me know if you ever figure it out!

Maybe I'm the first person here to say it but I find motivation really boring. I have started doing hundreds of things of various lengths and probably finished a dozen throughout my life, not including schoolwork.

I find it hard to start doing something without immediately engaging a mindset of, "Here's a task that some guy has assigned me to make money and/or consolidate power. What sense of duty is he creating to enable this?" And that's how my whole doing experience goes. Effort makes no point well which can't be better made with reference to idleness. It takes me nowhere without giving me the uncomfortable sense that someone thinks this is where I am supposed to need to be in order to see something false or escape something true. Endeavor idealises; it romanticises; it preaches. It falls asleep and it dreams. It is a selfish journey away from the truth.

The world already has enough that is beautiful and that is abhorrent - and passivity is far more challenging to confront. Input has always seemed like the easy way out.

Good point, you got me there :PI guess different people have different opinions and you're entitled to yours. Looking through your blog here it seems like you have many valid (and many invalid) points. And all arguing on the internet does is make people more firmly rooted in their own beliefs (though I do have to agree that I and many other XKCD fans have a lot of bias towards the comic, making it harder for us to recognize a bad comic--I try to be open-minded though and recognize when a comic is sometimes just not funny).

I know for a fact that 1021 isn't funny, so can someone explain to me what is *is*? I get the feeling that Randall thinks it's funny and I might too if I was really young (it's on par with the sort of jokes I made up in elementary school), but I still didn't hate it and I don't know why. Maybe it's because he actually drew something?

- Recurring character operating to form, fiendishly but harmlessly manipulating others;- Manipulating gulls, even;- As you say, "actually drew something";- Reasonably paced build-up to a complete final scene;- No hipster smart-assery;- No PPD;- No pandering;- Not expected - some people may have seen a similar joke but clearly not everyone has;- Planned rather than random absurdity;- Finally, although I'm sure someone will have a seizure because I suggest it, this does have a (probably unintentional) interpretation as anti-bourgeois dada, the free birds tempted to make themselves into a product.

It's not ha-ha funny, but it's a sweet set-up neatly presented. Maybe your "elementary school" jokes were as funny and as well executed - present them to this critical audience if you wish.

1022 is fine. Two comics I haven't disliked in a row. Randy going for some sort of record here? On the other hand maybe he's just scanning old material or this is just a temporary fluke, possibly caused by the cancer spreading to his brain. Can cancer spread through breast milk?

I am srsly ticked off by the use of protip re: making conversation by someone who thinks social conduct is meaningless. I am probably reading too much into something just there for the cuddlefishies to fawn over, but what's an anon to do with Rob stuck somewhere between the fridge and the freezer.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.